In the new issue of Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux argues that the recent oil price decline is at least partly the result of increased supply from the extraction of shale oil. The increased supply allows the economy to produce more goods, which benefits some people, if not all of them. Thus, contrary to some commentary in the press, cheaper oil prices cannot harm the economy as a whole.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Archives: 08/2014

One consequence of the events in Ferguson, Mo. is that people are talking with each other across ideological lines who usually don’t, a symbol being the attention paid on both left and right to Sen. Rand Paul’s op-ed last week in Time. And one point worth discussing is how the problem of police militarization manifests itself similarly these days in local policing and in the enforcement of federal regulation.

Many of the raids [federal paramilitary enforcers] conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.

Take the case of Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., who was “visited” by a SWAT team from the U.S. Department of Education in June 2011. Agents battered down the door of his home at 6 a.m., dragged him outside in his boxer shorts, and handcuffed him as they put his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a police car for two hours while they searched his home. The raid was allegedly intended to uncover information on Wright’s estranged wife, Michelle, who hadn’t been living with him and was suspected of college financial-aid fraud.

The year before the raid on Wright, a SWAT team from the Food and Drug Administration raided the farm of Dan Allgyer of Lancaster, Pa. His crime was shipping unpasteurized milk across state lines to a cooperative of young women with children in Washington, D.C., called Grass Fed on the Hill. Raw milk can be sold in Pennsylvania, but it is illegal to transport it across state lines. The raid forced Allgyer to close down his business.

Fund goes on to discuss the rise of homeland-security and military-surplus programs that have contributed to the rapid proliferation of SWAT and paramilitary methods in local policing. He cites Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, which similarly treats both manifestations of paramilitary policing as part of the same trend.

There has already been left-right cooperation on the issue, as witness the unsuccessful Grayson-Amash amendment in June seeking to cut off the military-surplus 1033 program. As both sides come to appreciate some of the common interests at stake in keeping law enforcement as peaceful and proportionate as situations allow, there will be room for more such cooperation.

“Pleikus are like streetcars.” That’s how McGeorge Bundy, President Johnson’s national security advisor, explained what the escalation of U.S. bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965 to had to do with the administration’s justification for it, which was a Vietcong attack on U.S. bases near Pleiku. Johnson had already decided to increase bombing, but he wanted a pretext that would make it seem defensive. Bundy meant that, absent the Pleiku attack, another incident would have come along shortly to justify additional bombing. A similar bait-and-switch is occurring today in U.S. Iraq policy.

On August 7, President Obama explained that we were bombing Iraq again to defend U.S. personnel in Erbil and rescue ten of thousands of Yazidi civilians stranded on Mount Sinjar (really mountains) and surrounded by murderous militiamen of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Now, it turns out there were far fewer Yazidis on the mountain than the administration claimed; they are mostlyout of harm’s way, and the threat to Erbil has ebbed.

With the two goals he set for bombing achieved, the President quickly offered a third. In the letter sent to Congress on Sunday (pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, which he floutswhen it’s inconvenient) the President argued that U.S. bombing would help “Iraqi forces” retake the Mosul dam. Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi Special Forces have now done that.

Monday, the President again broadened the bombing’s objectives. The airstrikes against ISIS still protect U.S. personnel and serve humanitarian purposes, he said, but now, it seems, those are general goals that ongoing bombing serves. The President also suggested that ISIS is a security threat to the United States. Not for the first time, he said that once the new Iraqi government forms, we will “build up” Iraqi military power against ISIS.

Trade policy people spend most of their time talking about free trade between countries. But there is still some work to do on free trade within countries. Some Canadians are making a push right now, as Canadian business groups are calling forCanada’s leaders “to dismantle internal trade barriers and ensure the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between all parts of the country.”

If that sounds odd, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not as though Canadian provinces are imposing tariffs on each other. Rather, this is part of a more advanced notion of free trade, where you have a “single market” for goods and services. So for example, these groups complain that:

Different regulations and standards means that manufacturers may need to adapt their machinery in order to produce containers such as dairy creamers, butter and drinkable yogurts for sale nationally across all provincial jurisdictions.

Or:

massage therapy is regulated in some provinces but not all, meaning that a professional would have to become certified in order to be allowed to practice.

These issues are difficult to address between sovereign nations, although people are trying, most notably in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. But within countries, it seems like this is something that could and should be dealt with. Here in the U.S., we have the famous problem of not being able to buy health insurance across state lines. The current effort in Canada seems like a valuable one; it might be useful to have a similar review of internal trade barriers here in the U.S.

Today, Education Next released its latest survey results on education policy. As with the Friedman Foundation’s survey earlier this year and previous Education Next surveys, scholarship tax credits (STCs) remain the most popular form of private educational choice. STCs garnered support from 60% of respondents compared to 50% support for universal school vouchers and only 37% support for low-income vouchers.

The Friedman Foundation’s survey found the strongest support for educational choice among younger Americans. While Americans aged 55 and up favored STCs by a 53%-33% margin, Americans aged 18-34 supported STCs by a whopping 74%-14% margin. While it’s possible that younger Americans are more likely to support educational choice because they’re more likely to have school-aged children, it could also be evidence of growing support for educational choice generally. The series of Education Next surveys provides strong support for the latter interpretation, as shown in the chart below. (Note: the 2013 Education Next survey did not ask about STCs.)

While support for STCs was only 46% in 2009, it has grown to 60% this year. Over the same time, opposition has fallen from 27% to 24%, with a low of 16% in 2012. If support among millennials merely remains constant, overall support for educational choice will continue to grow in the coming years, making the adoption and expansion of such programs increasingly likely.

[See here for Neal McCluskey’s dissection of the Education Next survey questions concerning Common Core.]

The annual Education Next survey is out, and its headliner is the Common Core. Unfortunately, it features basically the same incomplete, answer-skewing question it employed last year, and reports the same dubious finding of majority support. But even with that, the direction in which opinion has moved speaks volumes about the serious trouble the Core is in.

Just like last year, the question gives a misleading description of either the Core or national standards generically—pollsters asked a version that did not mention the Core by name—and got high rates of support. Here’s the question, with the parts that were omitted, for half the respondents, in brackets:

As you may know, in the last few years states have been deciding whether or not to use [the Common Core, which are] standards for reading and math that are the same across the states. In the states that have these standards, they will be used to hold public schools accountable for their performance. Do you support or oppose the use of these [the Common Core] standards in your state?

Like last year, the question completely ignores major federal coercion behind states’ adopting the Core, as well as the fact that the Core itself is only part of what’s necessary to “hold public schools accountable.” Tests, and consequences for performance on them, are needed for accountability, and those are driven by federally demanded testing and sanctions. Oh, and Washington selected and paid for specific Core-aligned tests. Meanwhile, generic common standards would in no way have to be used to hold schools accountable; they could just be toothless measuring devices. And how many people would come out against something as seemingly positive as holding schools “accountable”? The devil is in how, exactly, that would be done.

Yesterday’s Washington Post has an in depth—and very depressing—piece about Medicare fraud. The piece focuses on scammers taking advantage of Medicare’s payment systems to buy unnecessary motorized wheelchairs and scooters for Medicare enrollees and stick American taxpayers with the bill.

Medicare’s payment system is designed to pay bills within 30 days of receipt; the system receives 5 million claims daily. Due to the huge volume of payments, Medicare only reviews a very small percentage, 3 percent, before the payment is made. Instead, payments are reviewed after they are processed, but even then not all are subject to oversight and review.

That system design invites fraud and scammers are able to take advantage. The Washington Post describes it as an “honor system.” The lack of upfront investigations costs taxpayers billions annually in fraud and wasteful payments.

But even worse than Medicare’s lax oversight is that officials knew about the fraud regarding wheelchairs and still didn’t act. According to the Washington Post,

Now, the golden age of the wheelchair scam is probably over.

But, while it lasted, the scam illuminated a critical failure point in the federal bureaucracy: Medicare’s weak defenses against fraud. The government knew how the wheelchair scheme worked in 1998. But it wasn’t until 15 years later that officials finally did enough to significantly curb the practice.

This problem was widespread. Medicare has spent $8.2 billion on power wheelchairs since 1999 for an ever-increasing proportion of enrollees. Records suggest “that at least 80 percent of claims were ‘improper.’”

Before the fraud had taken off, the chairs were rare: One study estimated that in 1994, only 1 in 9,000 beneficiaries got a new wheelchair.

By 2000, it was 1 in 479.

By 2001, it was 1 in 362.

By 2002, it was 1 in 242.

In 2012 up to 219,000 Medicare recipients received motorized wheelchairs, 1 in 235 patients, worse than in 2002. In 2013 only 124,000 individuals, 1 in 400 patients, received power wheelchairs from Medicare.

Medicare is slowly getting the issue under control; it is just 15 years too late.

U.S. foreign policy is a bipartisan fiasco. George W. Bush gave the American people Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving. Barack Obama is a slightly more reluctant warrior, but he is taking the country back into Iraq.

Hillary Clinton, the unannounced Democratic front-runner for 2016, supported her husband’s misbegotten attempt at nation-building in Kosovo and led the drive for war in Libya, which is violently unraveling. Most of Clinton’s potential GOP opponents share Washington’s bomb, invade, and occupy consensus.

The only exception is Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. He stands alone advocating a foreign policy which reflects the bitter, bloody lessons of recent years.

The Islamic State of Syria and the Levant is the latest result of Washington’s incessant and counterproductive meddling in the Middle East. But the usual suspects are calling for more intervention, more war. This time, they promise, everything will go well.

This is the Obama administration’s position in Iraq and Syria. However, Hillary Clinton has begun maneuvering for 2016 by running to Obama’s right. While she mocked the president’s mantra of “Don’t do stupid stuff,” she spent her career doing just that.

Instead of offering an alternative leading Republicans are all in for war, more war, forever war. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, naturally have been advocating that America intervene more in both Syria and Iraq.

Most plausible Republican candidates are running toward the interventionist sideline. They blame Obama for Iraq even though it was George W. Bush who invaded that nation and failed to win Iraqi approval for a permanent U.S. garrison.

New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie has ostentatiously joined the most hawkish GOP elements. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee accused President Obama of guessing wrong in Egypt, Iran, Libya, and Syria, even though the president acted on the traditional Republican script in all four cases.

Florida’s Marco Rubio advocated military action against ISIL, after supporting the usual plethora of interventionist disasters: war in Libya, more involvement in Syria, and now combat in Iraq. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also pushes a strongly hawkish agenda, though he at least opposed bombing Syrian government forces.

Last month Texas Gov. Rick Perry attacked Paul as an isolationist and advocating that the U.S. go back to war in Iraq. Michael Goldfarb approvingly said of Perry “you have to assume he’d shoot first and ask questions later.”

Dramatically misguided was the latter’s contention that “isolationism”—in contrast to the promiscuous interventionism of the last three decades which has spawned so many vicious attacks—threatened to increase terrorism.

Underlying the torrent of Republican criticism of Paul is fear. The American people are tired of incessant war-mongering by the Washington elite. Paul rightly noted that “The country is moving in my direction.” That’s scary if your political future is tied to policies that have failed so flagrantly and frequently.

Paul is more cautious than his father, former Rep. Ron Paul. Nevertheless, Paul fils recently noted that “The let’s-intervene-and-consider-the-consequences-later crowd left us with more than 4,000 Americans dead, over two million refugees and trillions of dollars in debt.”

In citing President Ronald Reagan’s maxim of “peace through strength,” Paul noted some Republicans “have forgotten the first part of the sentence: That peace should be our goal even as we build our strength.” As I note in my latest Forbes online column, people are tired of young Americans “being treated as gambit pawns in an endless series of global chess games, to be sacrificed whenever folks in Washington dream up a grand new crusade.”

Hillary Clinton represents today’s foreign policy consensus—of constant intervention and war. Nominating someone who advocates the same failed policy would seem to be the best way for Republicans to lose in 2016. Will anyone join Rand Paul in charting a different course?